


The Styx Drains to the Tideway

by versus_versus



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 1890's AU, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Doctor Hux, Don't Ask About Matt, I'll add more characters and tags as I go, Kylo Amidala, M/M, Montmorency AU, Rey shows up in chapter 4 idk, Secret Identity, Snoke Being a Dick, Victorian Medicine, graphic descriptions of London's sewers, it's really Benjamin Amidala but that's the closest tag, the opera and other related pretentious garbage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 21:19:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9566792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/versus_versus/pseuds/versus_versus
Summary: 1882When a thief wakes up in prison, pieced together by more stitches than he can count, he finds his life has been saved by a young doctor out to prove his skill. The fall should have killed him, and yet once he recovers he finds himself taken to a variety of scientific lectures and paraded about as a miracle of modern medicine. On one such occasion, he finds himself listening to a lecture discussing the miracle of the modern sewers and their impact. Where others might be disgusted by the very thought of the filth in the sewers, the thief sees potential for a clean getaway.Upon his release from prison, he adopts a dual pair of identities: the affluent aristocrat Benjamin Amidala and his crooked manservant, Ren. He lives two lives, but his entire existence is dependent on deceit and trickery, and one wrong move could send him to the gallows.(This piece will be completed eventually, as it's already fully planned out. It just updates slowly.)





	

He woke in the infirmary, chilled to the bone and floating on a haze of opioids.

“Ah, you’re awake.” He couldn’t turn his head to see the speaker, although he could pin the voice down as female. “I’ll call for the doctor.”

The man wanted to ask where he was and what had happened, but he couldn’t muster the strength. His his head felt as though it were being split in two, his mouth was stuffed full of cotton, and his throat felt as though it was cracking as he tried to shape words. The sound of her shoes faded and he found himself in the silent space again, trapped in his own head as unconsciousness tugged at his mind.

Later, as he regained consciousness, agony slowly crept over him, deepset and near-blinding. Pain spun its way through his body so deeply that he couldn’t pinpoint what truly hurt. He wanted to scream, to lash out, but he found he couldn’t make a sound, much less move.

What felt like hours later, although it truly couldn’t have been, the sound of shoes returned, accompanied by a second set of footsteps. He pried his eyes open and squinted at the ceiling, eyes watering in the light.

“Hello, can you hear me?” A man leaned over his bed, coming into view. He was a pale redhead that the man instantly put down as Irish, despite his mixed accent. “Miss Lockland said you’d woken, hopefully you’re not out again.” The doctor held a small lantern in front of his eyes and moved it back and forth a couple times, watching his reaction intently. He turned to the nurse and noted something she scribbled down.

Panic rose as the man tried to assess what was going on. He found one of his arms set in a thick plaster cast. He moved his other arm and found himself cuffed to the heavy metal rail on the side of the gurney.

“Ah, yes. About that.” The doctor took on an apologetic tone, but didn’t stop what he was doing. “Officially, you’re being held in Newgate, but for now, as I needed you under my direct supervision to attend to your wounds, you’re in the medical ward. Not that it improves your circumstances unduly, but…I suppose it’s something.”

“Newgate?” The word cracked in half as he said it.

“Yes, you’re to be held here until fit for trial or, failing my best efforts, dead.” The doctor held his fingers to his throat, pressing them down in search of a pulse and timing it on a pocket watch. “Try to breathe normally, Ren. If you would, try to match my count.”

He fought to control his breathing for a time, struggling to bring it back to a normal rate. The doctor raised and lowered his hand at a pace determined by his stopwatch, and the man found that despite the pain in his ribs, he could match the pace. Once he had slowed his breathing, the doctor moved on and the nurse aided him by taking up the same hand motion. He made progress slowly but surely, and when he found he could speak, asked, “Ren?”

“Pardon, but we’ve taken to calling you ‘Ren’. That was the only identification we could find on you after your fall. The label etched in the leather of your toolkit?” The doctor looked at him curiously. “If you could give us your name, we’ll get your files updated properly.”

He blinked, weighing his options and quickly coming to a conclusion. He thought he knew his name, but he wasn’t sure. “I…I don’t…”

The doctor’s eyes were pale and luminescent behind his glasses, which dipped low on his nose. “You don’t what?”

“I…don’t remember.”

“Ah.” The doctor’s eyebrows rose. “Well, that’s not altogether unheard of. You suffered a severe concussion, and the plates of your skull fractured in several places. For now, we’ll keep calling you Mr. Ren. If you regain memories, which you likely will over time, we can update your records. Now,” the doctor stood and looked him over once, “I apologize, but I need to check and make sure all of your internal organs are approximately back where they need to be. We’re in for an unpleasant interlude.”

The doctor pulled the starch-white sheet back and Ren looked down at the mess that remained of his chest. It was a patchwork of stitches and scabs, massive ropey gashes and incisions meticulously sewn closed, all mottled by blood-blackened blotches spread across what had once been the fairly flat plane of his chest and stomach.

The nurse started pulling straps up from the table and fastening them tight across his limbs. The ones across his chest and hips, which had already been buckled and holding him fast under the sheet, were horribly painful, and her mouth was set in a grim line.

“What are you doing?”

“As I said, I need to make sure all of your organs have settled back where they ought to be.” The doctor scrubbed his hands in a steaming basin on a rolling table next to the gurney. “Try to stay still. This is going to hurt.”

* * *

They prepped him for continued treatment, which, that day, was to include surgery to set the bones in his leg.

The nurse helped him through the better part of a fifth of whiskey that tasted like piss. His stomach turned, and he knew he hadn’t eaten properly in days. As the drink set in, he wondered if he would even be allowed to eat. Perhaps he couldn’t. Whatever the doctor had done to him, maybe he would never eat again. His mind raced to the worst possible conclusion. Maybe the doctor had removed his stomach. Maybe he’d removed all of his guts, or maybe he’d taken them out and then put them back, and that’s why he’d needed to make sure they were where they belonged.

The drink hit him hard, and he quelled the sick feeling in his stomach that threatened to have him vomiting all over himself. If the doctor couldn’t fix his leg, maybe he would just take the entire thing off. He’d have to hop around like old One Leg Jim, a beggar that he distantly remembered had curled up at the end of the street he’d grown up on as a child. Where that street was, he wasn’t sure. But he remembered the man.

The glint of the doctor’s scalpel caught his eye and he lifted his head. He felt detached from his legs, they must belong to someone else, they were so very far away. He could distantly hear screaming. It took some time to realize it was his own.

The nurse flitted in and out of his vision and he heard the sounds of surgery in excruciating detail. Slick, sick sounds of the knife and the doctor prodding about in his leg, the grind of something that sounded like a saw, something that burned and burned and burned and threatened to turn his entire body to ash on the table as the doctor prepared to set the bone with pins. When he finally began to place them, the doctor grunted with exertion with each turn of the screw into bone. “My. God. You. Have. Hard. Bones.”

Ren mumbled something he would never remember through the whiskey blur before falling back into the pain and watching the ceiling spin.

* * *

Later, he was told the accident had occurred as he was fleeing a smash and dash, a straightforward window-breaking robbery. He’d robbed a grocer, thankfully not a high end shop, and run off along the rooftops, leading officers on a merry chase before plunging through a factory skylight and onto the machinery below. It had been a blessing (or a curse, depending on one’s perspective) that the press hadn’t been in operation. Still, the cold iron frame had done irreparable damage.

They’d brought him to the prison, inches from death, and it was only through luck that Hux had heard of his plight. A young army doctor, recently returned from a stint in the third Ashanti War, where he’d practiced his trade until the Treaty of Fomena sent him back to London. Once home, he fought to make a name for himself, but there was rather a lack of traumatic battlefield injuries to be found in London. Instead, Hux had found himself treating cradle-fever and pneumonia, gout and occasionally gangrene. He’d been pointed in Ren’s direction by an old friend from the army, an on-duty officer whose life Hux had saved in the war. That officer had sent a runner for the good doctor when they’d found Ren, and he’d jumped at the opportunity.

Concussed, broken, and bleeding out slowly, the police had loaded him up in a cart and taken him to the prison, half expecting a corpse by the time they arrived. Instead, mere minutes after arriving, Doctor Hux had appeared and declared he was taking the man on as a charity case.

He made his case to the warden even as he worked to staunch the flow, up to his elbows in blood. “Sir, you needn’t worry. I will provide all necessary materials and funds, all I need is a bed in the hospital, which I will, of course, pay for until he can be moved to the infirmary and put under standard care. If needed, I’ll even pay for that.”

Ren had been a test of his skill, more torn up than any he’d had the chance to work on since his return from the war. Broken bones snapped like matchsticks, lifeblood leaking away slowly, and a massive gash that had opened him up from hipbone to sternum as a result of hitting factory equipment on the way down, all proved formidable tests of his skill. 

Following Ren’s initial treatment and stabilization, the doctor plied the warden over dinner for continued permission to treat the sorry creature. Their views on punishment and public health weren’t all that different, and the doctor’s steadfast belief that better public health and sanitation in the squabbling masses would in turn provide better education and a secure work life convinced the warden. He provided a clear argument that poverty and illness caused the desperation that bred petty criminals like Ren, and any improvement in medicine would ultimately reduce the crime rate. He buttered the warden up with long sentences, lofty ideas, and decent whiskey, and in the end was satisfied with the permission to provide continued care to his patient.

After that, the warden had barely argued. At the time, it had seemed that the thief would be dead in a week, anyhow. If his injuries didn’t kill him, surely infection would. If his passing could advance the cause of modern medicine, who was he to argue with the remaining bottle of whiskey cautiously held out as a peace offering? The doctor clearly knew what he was doing, even if his mixed Brogue spoke of a less-than-favorable upbringing.

They shook on it over the thief’s unconscious body. “He’s yours.”

* * *

Ren healed slowly, the victim of the doctor’s most ambitious procedures. Bones that had broken beyond repair were set and screwed together in surgery at the teaching hospital down by the river. Hux made an effort to educate as he worked, utilizing techniques and tools he’d only been able to dream of in the field to stitch, suture, and staple the thief’s mangled body back together. To him, it seemed, the hospital was a luxury, stocked with the supplies and space they’d never had on the battlefield.

Once he was capable of staying conscious for long enough, Ren was carted off to stand trial, even though he couldn’t physically stand on broken legs.

Things went approximately as expected. He was listed as prisoner 1138 and charged with breaking and entering as well as robbery. What defense was to be had when one couldn’t even remember the crime?

Though his crime was low-profile, he himself was not. Word had spread of the man Doctor Hux had saved from the brink of death, and any number of spectators came from the scientific community to gawk at the patched-together prisoner. The doctor himself testified, verifying that, given the severity of his concussion, his lack of memory was unsurprising. Perhaps he had already been punished by the divine in the fall that had left him a broken man.

The judge bought the story, and agreed to let him off easy. He was sentenced to ten years, and that was the end of it.

* * *

It was another four months and half a dozen surgeries in the teaching hospital before he could walk on his own and was deemed well enough to be transferred to the prison proper.

Hux, unsurprisingly, talked the warden into allowing him the opportunity to continue his patient’s treatment. There were so many things that could be learned from such a patient, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Bribed with enough whiskey, the warden once again agreed.

* * *

Ren did not fare well in prison.

He was quiet, the kind of quiet that didn’t speak of cowardice. At the beginning, the few times he was permitted in the exercise yard, it put other prisoners on-edge. Rumors swirled through the ranks, that he was in for petty thievery but that he’d gotten off a murder charge. He’d killed a child. He’d hunted down his wife’s murderer and gutted him like a pig. Though the rumors ranged far and wide, one element of the story remained the same: that the doctor had defended him, told the public that he ought to be preserved as a miracle of modern medicine, despite being a dangerous criminal. 

Even then the rumors differed. He’d gotten off easy in his sentencing because the doctor wanted to cut him open again, the doctor got off on sticking his hands in the guts of others, the doctor was using him for some sort of twisted experiments, he was quiet because the doctor had done a lobotomy on him and so on.

None of them were true. He stayed quiet because he listened. He listened and learned and calculated, determining which of the other prisoners could be useful.

Once, he had been tall and lean, but the fall had left him in bed, unable to move, for months on end. What muscle he’d once had had atrophied and wasted away, leaving him a lanky, uneven mess of sinew and scar tissue. It didn’t take long for more dangerous rumors to spread through the ranks of the prisoners, that Ren was special, that he had the favor of the doctor and that he was not to be physically harmed.

But there was so much that could be done to a person without physically harming them.

A year passed, relatively uneventful but for the daily abuses thrown at Ren in prison. Food slopped on the floor or simply refused, not being released from his cell to empty his toilet bucket, small things that amounted to little bodily harm, but lower and lower morale as time slipped by.

For the most part, Ren stayed quiet and stuck to himself. He refrained from putting his rather oversized nose where it didn’t belong, or at least, appeared to.

As the months went on, Ren determined that he could, with moderate ease, gather information. The other prisoners had determined he wasn’t a threat, and once the rumors died down he had no reputation to speak of, so those that participated in prison politics thought little of saying anything around him. He waited, he went ignored, and he gathered information with the knowledge that he one day might need it.

The only reputation he gained was one associated with his frequent visits to the infirmary or, on occasion, Middlesex Hospital in Mortimer Street. When the doctor wished to use Ren as an educational example for doctors in training, he would beg the warden for special permission to take him, under guard and chained at all times, to the surgical theater. Ren came to dread the floor amid the circle of benches every bit as much as he’d feared the surgical ward, although this new fear was laced with shame and embarassment. To be treated as a specimen was horribly humiliating, and he felt like a beast chained in a menagerie for the amusement of academics.

Still, there came a day when Hux was well and truly finished with all surgical procedures he’d planned for Ren. One final trip to Middlesex, accompanied by a series full-body drawings depicting each and every wound, incision, and surgical procedure, and Ren was deemed a whole man again. Still fragile, reassembled with carefully tied catgut stitches and held together by a mass of scar tissue, there were times he felt he might be blown over by the lightest breeze through the yard. Still, the doctor determined that other than regular bi-annual visits to assess the status of his health, the treatments themselves were complete.

Ren settled in to uninterrupted prison life, preparing himself to spend the next near-decade staring at the walls of his cell until a chilly April day when something greater than him, something he might have called the divine, intervened.

* * *

A door to the block opened and closed, heavy metal locked behind the guards. Ren listened for conversation and was surprised to hear the familiar voice of the doctor after months of absence.

“We’ll need him for half a day at a time, approximately.” Ren stared up at the ceiling of his cell, listening carefully. “I’m not planning to continue his treatment at this time, but he’s an excellent teaching specimen. Given the opportunity after he’s served out his sentence, he could make at least half wages simply by allowing the doctors at Middlesex to use him for teaching.”

“We can’t expend additional guards for his transport. You’ll need to provide them.”

“That can be arranged, assuming he is amenable to the suggestion.”

The footsteps stopped in front of his cell and there was a rap on the door. “1138. You have a visitor.”

He pulled himself up, sitting on the edge of his pallet, hands placed on his knees where they would be visible and non-threatening. The door swung open and he found that even the doctor’s absurd hair was rather dimmed by the half-light of the prison. Perhaps the place truly did suck the life out of everything that came near.

The doctor looked at the warden for leave to address him, launching into what could only have been a prepared speech. “If you’re willing, I’d like to take you to a number of scientific conventions and society meetings. Your survival and recovery are, quite frankly, a triumph for modern medicine, and it would be a shame to keep that progress out of the public eye.”

Ren looked to the warden, trying to understand where he stood. The man looked down at him with distaste. “I’m not fond of the idea, but you owe the doctor your life. Given that, I think it wise to keep him happy, yes? Want him on your side if you manage to get yourself in trouble in here.” The threat was clear, although the doctor didn’t seem to notice. “What do you say, Ren?”

“Yes sir.” He kept his head down as best he could, trying to squash the thrill that ran through him. Given the right circumstances, he stood a chance of escaping. He could bide his time until the moment was right, and then…

…and then what? Where would he go? What could he do? He wasn’t even sure he remembered his real name, only had flashes of his past, and his friends before prison were a blur.

Better, then, to agree to the doctor’s request and bide his time.

“What do you say to the doctor?”

“Thank you, sir.”

He listened to them go, something like excitement sharp in the back of his mouth.

* * *

The conventions and society meetings were, in a way, another mixture of blessing and curse. He found his spirits lifted upon leaving the prison, despite the armed guard that escorted him. He didn’t look like much, a scraggly pieced-together skeleton of the man he’d once been, and the hired security was considerably more lenient than the guards in Newgate.

The doctor, for his part, was nervous for the first few presentations he gave, reviewing his notes in the brougham as they traveled. Ren couldn’t remember travelling any way but on foot, and it was novel to look through the windows and watch the world pass by.

The semblance of humanity the taste of freedom gave him was stripped away by his treatment at the society meetings. Doctor Hux was a member of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Though they attended so many meetings Ren lost count, few presentations Ren saw from the corner of the auditorium had live specimens.

He himself was the only human specimen, and few of the scientists treated him as such.

* * *

He’d always been a thief. At the Royal Society meetings, he simply stole ideas instead of tangible goods.

He listened to lectures on natural sciences, like biology and chemistry, or mathematics and engineering. He learned the basics of modern medicine and breakthroughs in sanitary practices one day, and learned more than he could properly keep track of about philosophy and human nature the next month.

Ren had always enjoyed school, but monetary necessity had only ever afforded him literary and mathematical basics. Here, he could soak in as much knowledge as he pleased to remember, ruminating on it once he was once again locked in his cell back at Newgate. There was nothing to be done with such information, but it did give him something with which to distract himself during the lonely hours of the night.

Security was a single guard and a pair of shackles, removed when he was to go on stage. In theory, it was a small price to pay for the opportunity to learn from many preeminent scholars of the day.

* * *

“To be quite frank, it was rather questionable for awhile there. The cut here,” Hux pointed to the largest scar, an ugly, uneven gash that ran like a bandolier from sternum to hip, “allowed access to many of his internal organs. He had a fair amount of liver damage, particularly to the right and quadrate lobes, and the metal spike I removed very nearly missed the proper hepatic artery on the way through. If you’ll take a look at…”

After six months of the new routine, Ren tuned the lecture out, having heard it time and time again with all its variations. Instead, he let himself relax into the only kind touch in a world still full of pain and suffering. The touch of Hux’s hands was careful and purposeful, never as harsh or callous as the scientists and medical professionals that still poked and prodded him like a specimen in a zoo.

The doctor’s hands had brought him near unimaginable amounts of pain as well, but they’d done their job and saved his life. Ren hated himself for it, but it was hard not to be the slightest bit grateful.

He focused on Hux’s hands, able to see them in his mind’s eye without looking. They were clean, the cleanest, neatest hands Ren had ever seen, constantly subjected to washing in bowls of near-boiling water and scoured with bars of carbolic soap. The doctor constantly smelled of the tar-like scent of it. Nails filed so short they couldn’t hold even the slightest trace of dirt, skin pale and almost soft, they were healing hands that…

Harder hands grabbed him and broke him from his daze. He focused on the man before him, introduced as one Professor Richard Schram, who took no care in manhandling him into a different position, better to be viewed in the newly installed electric lights of the presentation hall of Burlington House, where the Society was housed. He prodded at Ren’s abdomen, inspecting the wound for himself. “Even the scar tissue is shaping up, I’m impressed.”

Hux preened at his praise. “The initial operations weren’t nearly so clean, they were done under duress, and I had to act quickly to save his life. I don’t know that I could have kept him alive if the visceral pleura had been pierced initially. However, given appropriate time for healing between procedures, I’ve found it’s certainly possible to return to an old wound to clean it up. As long as aseptic conditions are maintained, it’s far easier to manage infection, although when I went back to clean up some of the scar tissue I made certain not to compromise the integrity of the pleurae.” Hux looked toward the crowd and addressed them instead. “I believe I explained the nature of this particular wound in my last lecture, but to recap for those of you that weren't here: initially, the parietal pleura of his left lung was compromised, but the visceral was not. The initial stitches were catgut, although when I went back several months later, I experimented with silk and a noninterrupted purse-string suture on the external incision. Returning to clean up the internal stitching was unnecessary and extremely risky, although the external scar tissue was trimmed and shaped to allow expansion of the lungs.”

“So you don’t think these surgeries were improbable? His mobility is, quite frankly, excellent for a patient who’s had such extensive work,” someone in the crowd, unseen by Ren, said.

“It is, although I believe his strength and vitality prior to the accident had no small role in that. Here’s another excellent example,” Hux dropped low, shifting Ren’s weight entirely to his good leg. “The initial breaks required screws for setting, and the incisions were extensive. I’ve gone back through and cleaned up the scar tissue, as well as the tendons that were partially torn.” He stood back up. “Ren, if you would walk across the stage for me, with your normal gait?”

He did as asked, and there was an appreciative murmur from the parts of the crowd that hadn’t seen him in action before.

“Do the joints still handle extensive load-bearing?” someone piped up.

The doctor paused and turned to Ren, who shrugged his shoulders. Hux frowned. “Ren, would you be willing to attempt carrying something? Something light, for now. I believe Professor Schram has a stack of books backstage for signing after his presentation, perhaps that’s something we could use? We’ll have you hold them and walk, and then once you’re comfortable, if you’d lift them as close to shoulder level as you can.”

Ren found himself with an armful of books, overflowing and nearly too much for him to handle. Though not particularly heavy, they took both hands to carry, and as he walked across the stage again, the too-large briefs he’d been given to preserve his modesty threatened to slip down his hips and expose him.

There was a titter of laughter in the audience until Hux swept in, tugging the briefs back up and relieving him of the stack of books. Ren felt his face burn with humiliation. “Clearly, he has little trouble with such weight when it’s close to his center of gravity.”

Professor Schram dismissed Hux’s praise, prodding and pinching Ren to test his muscle tone. “He’s shaking, he’s weak. You’ve put him back together, but he’s as weak as a kitten.”

“Have you considered adding exercise to his daily regimen?” another man asked, one Ren recognized from previous lectures as a professor of natural science named Ewing. A pit of dread formed in Ren’s stomach as many of the other academics around him nodded. 

The doctor considered. “I hadn’t deemed him fit for it, but it’s certainly worth assessing and reconsidering. We ought to start him with light work and increase it as he regains his strength.”

The doctor’s orders to the warden were clear, but they went unheeded by the guards and the next week Ren found daily sessions of back-breaking labor added to the monotony of his cell.

* * *

Hard labor was misery. Another wing to the prison was under construction, and far be it from them to turn down free labor. The other prisoners hated him for his slowness as he fought with his own body to regain the muscle that had atrophied into nothingness. 

Ren was tasked with wheelbarrowing load after load of stone to the lucky prisoners who had shown a penchant for working with mortar. Those that succeeded in that could even learn from the stonemason that headed the project, almost like apprentices. At least when they left, they would have a marketable skill.

Those that mixed the mortar or carried the stone were little more than cheap, unskilled laborers. Ren accepted his place among them and struggled, unable to keep up.

The work left him aching, muscles sometimes refusing to function at all the day after particularly hard labor. Those days, he struggled to rise from his pallet and was left behind without food for the day. He vowed to himself to change that. He would gain his old strength back, and show them what he had once been capable of. He was young, and over time the muscle he’d once had began to come back, whipcord lean and built from hard work and a prison diet.

Mixing cement to bind the blocks was hellish, the quicklime burning when the powder got on sweat-slicked skin and the constant motion of mixing the cement threatening to tear his shoulders apart. There were times they were beaten by the guards, particularly an old guard, Bowman, who had a reputation for a terrible temper.

As Ren became more useful, he started to make acquaintances that were willing to talk. He didn’t ask for anything, simply provided a sympathetic ear to whatever bricklayer he was assigned to for the day. His pool of information grew slowly and steadily, and before long he began to spread that info strategically.

Months later, when he was beaten black and blue by Bowman to the point that he couldn’t move the next day, he decided he’d had enough. A few rumors, strategically placed, and then Ren waited.

* * *

The approval of the academics and doctors that appeared at Hux’s lectures slowly grew. As he was proven to be physically fit and healthy again, if scarred and still slightly misshapen, Ren found that their prodding and requests for demonstrations of his physical abilities increased.

Once he was deemed strong again, they took on a new angle. Requests were made for demonstrations of his flexibility and endurance. Hux warded them off for a time, claiming that Ren would likely never regain whatever flexibility he’d had before the surgeries, simply due to the amount of scar tissue that had grown in his joints during recovery. The other physicians in his field were clearly dissatisfied with such a response, and Hux eventually conceded, agreeing to start him on a therapy program to help him regain his range of motion.

The recommended therapy was brutally painful, with the only consolation being that Ren was able to spend another few hours a week with the doctor’s hands on him. They caused pain, certainly, pushing him far beyond his comfortable range of motion, but he found that with every therapy session, he could move with greater ease. 

The next lecture they attended, three months later, brought praise for his progress. It was almost worth all the pain, all the humiliation Ren had gone through in the lectures to see the faint glow of pride in the doctor’s eyes.

He had no idea that one of those lectures would change the course of his life.

* * *

The man introduced himself as Ewan Powell, the Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and a successor to one Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who had apparently been the chief engineer during the time that they built the sewers of London, and was recently passed.

“I am here tonight, as I said, on the behalf of the late Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who passed not two weeks ago, mayherestinpeace. I stand before you to discuss the importance of one of our greatest public works, one that runs below our very feet as we walk along the road. The sewers.”

Ren listened with a vague general interest. London’s relatively new sewerage system, which had taken the better part of twenty years to build and had cost the city more money than Ren could quite comprehend, had been completed a few short years before. He could remember the teams of laborers from his childhood years of freedom, and although he’d never quite seen the purpose at the time, it all became clear to him now.

The lecture revealed that the project had produced a total of eighty three miles of bricked underground tunnels, through which the putrid waste of the bustling city above now flowed. Waste that had once run through the streets was now dumped close to the mouth of the Thames, to be washed out to sea. After a pair of cholera epidemics decades before, the work had been started following physician John Snow’s identification of contaminated water as the source of the disease. The city was finally reaping the benefits of a decades-long project.

The engineer that presented the marvel, Powell, moved with an uncommon comfort for one of his status in the presence of Lords and academics. He had a brilliant command of his subject, and he spoke clearly and quickly, answering questions as he moved through his lecture with ease.

“Below your very feet, as you walk the roads of our city, lies the subterranean world of the sewers. The electric light is quickly sweeping our world gentlemen, and the underground gas pipes that currently light much of the city will soon be obsolete. But the sewers,” he paused and smiled, “the sewers will be used for the next hundred, two hundred, three hundred years. They are a work of art, even if that art smells like filth. So the next time you take a stroll down the street, consider the manholes that dot the cobbles, acting as gateways to the modern miracle belowground. It is the lifeblood of our city, the giant tunnels that carry clean water to our citizens and wash away their waste, allowing us to live more cleanly in this modern age.”

The map that Powell produced and continued to elaborate on was overlaid on a stunning hand-drawn map of the city, colored lines and intersections denoting the tunnels with near childlike simplicity.

It was only as Powell began to explain the decisions made in construction with the map as an aid that an idea began to dawn on Ren. In the flickering electric lights of the Scientific Society stage, he sat dazzled by the raw potential of the world laid bare before him.

The sewers. A vast network of interconnected tunnels that spanned nearly the entire breadth of the city. Healthy for those aboveground, a horror for any below, but the paths themselves out of sight and out of mind, a thief’s dream. If he could access those tunnels, he could climb up, hit a location, then disappear down into the drains before the police even arrived. They would never think to look in the dark water rushing beneath their very feet, and even if he were slow for a while when he got back on the streets, there would be no need for the sort of getaway that had led him on the chase across the rooftops and nearly killed him.

As the doctor gave his own presentation, the board was moved to the back of the auditorium, distant but still visible to Ren at center stage. The typical humiliation that went hand-in-hand with the presentation was nothing. His entire mind was preoccupied with the memorization of the map.

On the ride back to the prison, he sat in the brougham silently, ascertaining that he had committed the entire map to memory, possibilities and potential so sharp he could taste the tang of it in the back of his throat.

* * *

He built a plan over the next few months. Certain parts of it were simple, clear as day from the moment he’d seen the map.

The concept itself was simple. Traverse the city invisibly through the sewers, raid places as he wanted, and disappear back into the sewers with as much loot as he could carry before the police arrived.

He dreamed of greater things than robbing grocers for food. With a plan like this, he could hit areas of town otherwise unavailable to someone who looked as he did. There was a certain look that people associated with the dregs of society, and leaving prison when his sentence was up would almost certainly leave him ragged.

But if he could disappear immediately after a theft? It would be as simple as fading into the night. Raids, then, would be almost easy. The difficulty would be in ridding himself of the goods, those gained from high society. Looking as he did, it would be impossible to show up at a jeweler’s shop to sell what could hardly be a family heirloom. There were only so many ‘family heirlooms’ a poor person could sell before it became suspicious.

And, of course, there was the idea of walking into a pawn shop covered in sewage. Clearly, that wouldn’t do.

Before the fall, he’d simply used or pawned the things he’d stolen. Food was eaten, clothes were bartered or worn, and for anything else of value he’d known a few fences that would take things off his hands for less than market price. But the burglaries he dreamed of were so much more than a simple smash and grab at a grocer’s shop.

He would need a new set of contacts, if he was to succeed in such a plan. But who to trust? No one. The secret of the sewers was his and his alone, and he intended to keep it that way. How then, to find himself an upper class accomplice that could be trusted to remain silent on the secret of the sewers, without asking a greater cut for himself? To ask an honest man would get him turned in, and to ask one of the less savory members of the upper crust was to open himself up to threats of blackmail or, should worst come to worst, if that contact were to be caught, they would almost certainly sell him out for a more lenient sentence.

And burglaries like the ones he dreamed of would be a death sentence for someone like him.

* * *

He stewed it over for weeks, telling himself he had years to come up with a solution if it wasn’t immediately apparent. The answer, when it occurred to him, was so simple as to be almost childish.

He clearly couldn’t trust anyone, and so the solution was _not_ to trust anyone.

He would be his own accomplice.

He turned the idea over in his head. It needed more thought, certainly, but the most obvious solution that occurred to him was simply to build a second persona, that of an aristocratic gentleman down on his luck.

And that, well, that was a daunting prospect. Could he blend in with the upper class well enough to pass as one of them?

It opened up an entirely new set of problems. He could read, he was certain of that. He could write, although his hand lacked the distinct elegance of proper penmanship. Those two skills held the potential to save or damn him. He only needed to pass long enough to rid himself of his loot.

It occurred to him that perhaps it would be impossible to fake it as a dandy without an extensive knowledge of how one might live that sort of life.

Still, it wasn’t long before the allure of an upper class life of luxury caught ahold of him and refused to let go. If he could pawn his loot, he would have the funds to support the lavish lifestyle he would need to pretend to have. Of course, a life like that would require continued funds, which would mean he would need to keep thieving to support himself, and would therefore need to keep up appearances in order to keep selling or pawning the things he stole. It was a vicious cycle, but Ren held high hopes that he could put enough away to support a small, comfortable life in the countryside.

By the time he had a full plan for his release put together, it had been years since Doctor Hux’s initial offer, and it was a day that should have been like any other. He was picked up from Newgate in the same cab as ever, accompanied by a single guard. He had long since given up on escaping, opting instead to wait his sentence out.

He spoke when spoken to by the doctor, who seemed distracted that morning. Halfway to the Society, he abruptly halted the cab, saying, “I’ve forgotten it, would you believe it? Forget my own head if it weren’t attached.”

“What have you forgotten, sir?” Ren asked. The guard eyed him, but let it go.

“The illustrations, the ones showing the improvements we’ve made between interrupted and noninterrupted sutures.” He shook his head. “We’ll run by my place on the way. It’s not ideal, but I need those illustrations.”

In about a quarter of an hour, they stopped out front of a small home, although it had a rather lovely garden and looked well-tended. Ren noted the address as the doctor ran in, returning with armfuls of the large, rolled illustrations he used to give his lectures.

While he appreciated everything the doctor had done for him, he would need the accoutrements to look the part when he was released, and Ren wasn’t above relieving the doctor of some such things.

* * *

Back at the prison the next day, Ren found himself helping yet another inmate finish his daily tasks in the yard, daydreaming of how he might look in fancy clothes as he hauled materials.

When he’d first been put to work, there were few in the physical workforce that wanted anything to do with Ren. He was too slow when unloading the stone cart and mixing cement, he put the others behind schedule, his silence unnerved people. There were any number of excuses, but all of them came down to one thing: few had wanted to work with Ren.

Instead, he’d made the acquaintance of the other rejects, and befriended them with ease. A kind word here, a gesture of camaraderie there, and Ren got close to the broken, weird, restless souls that had no alignment with one gang leader or another. He gained their trust and started to learn about them, picking up on their strengths, the things they could teach. It took time, but once he’d built a small group of acquaintances as well as his own strength, he found that others were more willing to accept him. As long as he didn’t look like the lone wolf that would kill a man as soon as look at him, he was treated as a nobody, but the pleasant sort of nobody that one might engage in aimless conversation with.

Still, the black sheep were the easiest to engage, at least those that were in for things like petty theft rather than murder. His first long-term cellmate, Callan Carter, was one of those such rejected people. He seemed small and energized on first meeting, but had an uncanny knack for mimicking those around him in both mannerisms and speech. He was a wiry man, crooked and hunched in the everyday. In mimicking the guards or others, he would take on a different bearing entirely unlike his own.

Carter had, despite his unassuming appearance, killed one of his previous cellmates. He claimed they had assaulted him first, but in the end, the blood on the floor wasn’t his, and his cellmate had suffered in the infirmary from a smashed skull for three days before finally dying. Rumors swirled that Carter suffered from unpredictable bouts of rage.

Ren and Carter got along passably. Sometimes, on good evenings, Carter would teach Ren his tricks: a twist of the lip, a certain bearing, the way he held a gaze could change how he presented himself in the blink of an eye. Ren started learning the tricks, and after a couple months, was able to do an uncanny imitation of both the warden and the doctor. Carter thought it was hilarious, to see his own skills mirrored in someone else, and Ren found the easiest way to break him out of one of his dark moods was to make him laugh.

The never-ending days of labor were no easier, but they were less of a burden on the soul with a the knowledge that they could talk in the evening, once they were returned to their cell.

The muscle that had atrophied into nothingness following Ren’s accident finally came back, bulkier than before. He cut a strange, striking figure out in the stoneyard, muscled but covered over with an array of gruesome scars that poked from his uniform shirt, which he would roll at the sleeves. Next to Carter, he looked massive.

They made for a strange, but effective, pair.

* * *

Ren bided his time, gathering all the information he could about the rivalries within the prison walls. There were several factions, but it was easy to narrow down who hated who the most. Ren focused on two rivals that had built their own gangs within the walls, a fuse already waiting to blow. All he had to do was fan the flames.

Although he spent much of his time in the yard paired with Carter, he found others were more willing to speak to him when he helped them with their tasks. Some days, he and Carter would finish their work early, and though Carter would skulk in the corners of the yard, Ren would pinpoint a target and help them. It was an effective method of persuasion. So long as he was working the guards would leave him alone, and if he targeted another prisoner who was falling behind, they would feel indebted to him. Behind prison walls, it was the best he had to barter with.

Once he’d formulated a plan and built a network of acquaintances, it only took a few words in the right place to start the rumors. One of the two was in on it with the warden, snitching secrets in exchange for shortening his sentence. Then it was the other one that was snitching, and spilling secrets from long before they were sentenced in the hopes that his enemy would be given a life sentence or death when his case came back up for review.

All it took was a whispered, “Snitch!” in the right place at the right time, specifically, in the mess, dead in the middle of a crowd.

Nobody ever noticed Ren, and when the room exploded, all he had to do was stay out of the way.

* * *

To a certain extent, Ren’s plans had paid off. Bowman, the guard who had spent months tormenting him, was seriously injured in the riot, stabbed in the side with a stolen spoon, sharpened into a shiv. He might have lived. He might have died. Either way, Ren never saw him again.

He also found out later that Carter had been one of the unlucky few uninvolved prisoners caught between the rivals. He’d been killed by a shiv in the neck, and that was that. Everything he’d taught Ren, gone in the blink of an eye.

Without Carter, the cell felt too large, too empty. He ought to have cherished the luxury of having a cell to himself, but he found that the silence crept in on him and threatened to smother him.

Ren threw himself into everything he had available to him. He took the opportunity to focus every fiber of his being on the work, rather than on survival. He grew stronger, pulled a number of lost lambs into his fold with a bit of well-timed camaraderie, and plotted. Over the years he’d grown into the stubborn, calculating sort, and every scrap of information he came across he filed away for later use.

* * *

When those that had been sent to the infirmary after the riot were finally returned to the general populace, split in separate cell blocks intended to keep the infighting to a minimum, Ren saw them in the yard or in the workforce in small groups. Several of them had barely made it out with their lives, and while the warden didn’t care much for the safety of the inmates, the incident was large enough that he feared for his job should all of them die. No one knew how the warden had bribed Doctor Hux to care for them, but it seemed the doctor had been rather less kind to those that weren’t his prize patient.

Ren couldn’t be certain. It had been so long since he’d been under the knife that some days he wondered if it was all a sick dream. He remembered little more about himself and his old life than he had upon waking, although occasionally he got a fragment of memory that slithered to the surface.

Something had changed in those that had been treated. Before, everyone had seen Ren’s scars. They knew the extent of the injuries, and there were rumors of how many surgeries he’d had. But to many of them, surgery was a distant prospect reserved for the desperate. Everyone had heard horror stories of surgeries gone wrong, but none of them had realized just how horrific they were even when they went right.

Some of the injured inmates came back completely changed men. They were quieter around Ren, a man who had been taken apart and put back together at the hands of a madman. They themselves had been seen to for extensive wounds or, in two cases, stab wounds left by makeshift shivs. They’d listened to one of those two sicken and die of infection, but the other had lived. Even worse than that, they’d all been there when the doctor had set one prisoner’s arm. It’d been an ugly compound fracture, and he’d been forced to screw the bones together. Some of them swore it had been the devil himself screaming in that ward.

They murmured about Ren when they thought he couldn’t hear them. He’d gone through how many procedures like that? The doctor had opened his guts up, _his very guts_ , how many times? How many screws did he have in him?

It gave Ren a buffer. It wasn’t exactly respect, but they no longer tried to intimidate him. Most skirted around him, giving him a wide berth. Maybe Ren wasn’t much to look at, but if he could withstand everything the doctor had thrown at him, he must have been made of tempered steel.

And nobody wanted to get in a fight with a man like that. You’d have to kill him outright to do any real damage.

* * *

His next cellmate was his own height, large-boned and sporting a moustache that had likely gone out of fashion ten years before over sandy blond stubble. He was German and spoke only broken English, and garnered the nickname ‘Franz’ from anyone who couldn’t be bothered to learn his real name, including the guards. Ren found that simply using his real name, Karl, was the start of a passable friendship, despite the language barrier.

For a time, they conversed in the barest minimum of words and mostly gestures. It took months for them to make real progress teaching each other English and German respectively. They found a middle ground, a pidgin that passed as conversational. 

Over a year passed that way, boredom interspersed with the need to navigate the complexities of prison politics from behind the scenes as Ren continued to build upon his plan. He lay staring at the ceiling one night before falling asleep, going over the map of the sewers in his mind as he did many evenings.

Quiet footsteps, then a bang on his cell. He cracked his eyes open to find Karl looking into the darkness beyond the bars where a guard glared at them both. “1138, you’re to report to the warden’s office in the morning. Pack all of your belongings, you’re being moved. Someone will be by to get you then.”

As his steps paced away, Karl’s voice came from the other side of the cell. “Glaubst du du kommst raus?"

“I don’t know.”

Karl slumped back on his pallet with a thump in the dark. “Wirklich?”

Ren stared up at the darkness where the ceiling ought to be. “I guess. I thought I had ten years.”

* * *

The early morning chill of the cell block Ren had become accustomed to was held at bay in the warden’s office, which was heated by a small fireplace that called to Ren’s very soul. The chill of the prison had sunk into his bones, and he was perpetually cold, but even that small fire was akin to a tropical paradise to him.

The warden sat back in his chair, deep green leather held over the wooden frame with brass tacks. “Well, 1138, your time here is done. Your original sentence has been converted to a five year sentence for good behavior. Other than your injuries, it seems you’ve been very nearly a model prisoner.” He took a deep breath. “I hope you’ll continue on this better path when you’re released. Hard work will take you far in this life.”

Ren stood there for a moment, shocked. “Sir?”

“You’re being let go. We need the space, and the judge has reduced sentences for a number of nonviolent offenders. You’ll be given all possessions we have on file for you, and you’ll be released. In addition, the doctor has requested you come to see him before you go on your way, and he’s left this,” the warden handed him an envelope, “with instructions. That being said, he’s arranged for transportation and once you’re off the premises, you are no longer my responsibility. It’ll be up to him to tell you what he wants with you at that point. You’re no longer our problem.”

“I…thank you sir.” He didn’t want to grovel, but if there had ever been a time to do so, now was the time.

“I don’t want to see you back here. Make an effort to be a good, law-abiding citizen. You’ve kept your nose clean here, don’t be a repeat offender.”

“Yes sir.”

He was ushered out of the office, still half-dazed. Office. Hallway. Lobby. The guard took him through and he stood in front of the desk, unsure what to do with himself as they uncuffed him and retrieved the few possessions they’d held for him, namely the clothes someone had scrounged up for him during his trial and a pair of boots that were distantly familiar. His uniform was taken and he re-dressed in civilian clothes, which fit poorly over the muscle he’d regained through his time in the prison yard. The only thing that fit properly was the boots, which he suspected had originally been his, from before the fall.

He sat in a rickety too-small chair, waiting silently for further instruction from the guards. After the better part of an hour, there was a clatter of hooves in the yard out front, and one of the guards went to check, returning to tug Ren to his feet and usher him into an aging gig.

As it clattered away from Newgate, Ren tried to process what was happening. He was leaving. All of his plans, everything he’d dreamed about for the past five years, he finally had the chance to implement it.

But first, he would have to see what it was the doctor wanted.

The gig drove through the gates and away. Ren didn’t look back.

* * *

The doctor’s residence remained the same and Ren found himself standing at the door, wondering how best to approach the situation. He reluctantly knocked on the door, hating his too-small clothes and the filth that still clung to his skin from the prison.

A housekeeper answered the door and gave him a brief once-over with wide eyes. Ren held up the envelope and said, “Doctor Hux wanted to see me?”

“Oh. Of course. Right this way.”

She led him to a parlor where the doctor sat, reading the _Manchester Guardian_ with a pair of spectacles balanced on his nose. The housekeeper cleared her throat and he looked up, blinked twice with what could only have been surprise, and stood up. “Ren! Come in, come in. I’m just settling down for...tea.” He looked at the tea service, which til that point had been neglected. “I suspect it may be over-steeped by now, but that’s no-one’s fault but my own.”

Ren came forward as the doctor ushered him into the room, and for a moment the doctor looked taken aback. “Are those the only clothes they gave you?”

“They’re the clothes from my trial. Not sure where they’re from.”

“Ah, I see. And your own clothes were ruined, my fault I’m afraid. I rather doubt they’d fit you anymore anyway. Anya, would you run down the street to the Morrison’s place, see if you can find something rather more suited to him? Those are far too small.”

“You don’t need to do…”

“Listen, Ren. You’re no longer a prisoner, you’re a patient of mine. And I prefer to treat patients with rather more courtesy than you were afforded in Newgate.” The doctor waved at the envelope in his hand and then motioned to him to have a seat at the table. “I apologize, you’ve caught me at an odd time. I’m not on call, but I’m more than happy to make time for you, of all people. Tea?”

The table was strewn with a variety of notepages and books that had been spread out under the newspaper, which the doctor quickly folded as he swept the notes into a pile. He marked each of the books and closed them, stacking them with the papers and clearing Ren a space at the table. The tea service, up until that point set aside, was moved to the table with a quick, “How do you take your tea?”

Ren suddenly found himself disarmed by the doctor’s strange kindness as he found himself presented with an offer for a simple cup of hot tea. “I’m…uhm. I…”

“Cream? Sugar?”

“Sugar?” His stomach turned unpleasantly. “I don’t…”

The doctor took his uncertainty into account. “Half sugar?” he offered.

“Half sugar,” Ren nodded, finding his bearings and taking the offered seat. The doctor fixed his tea and slid him the cup and saucer. He watched intently as the doctor prepared his own tea, cataloguing his mannerisms in a non-medical setting for later use.

The doctor looked elegant as he sipped his tea, although he frowned at the oversteeped bitterness. His hands looked as natural holding the teacup as a scalpel, whereas Ren found that the painted china looked fragile in his own grimy hands, even as he adjusted to reflect the way the doctor held his cup.

“Biscuits? I think there might be a bit of leftover cake, we had a party last weekend for my niece, she just turned four. Quite the important age for a little girl.” He smiled fondly, and Ren found himself floundering again. This was far more personal than he’d thought to get with the doctor, but here he was, having tea with the only person outside of his cellmates to show him a measure of kindness over the last five years.

“Uhm. No thank you sir.”

Hux waved the title off. “No need to call me sir. Reminds me of my father. In a professional scenario, Doctor Hux will do. Here, Hux is perfectly fine. Surnames tended to be the norm in the army.”

There was silence again and Ren desperately tried to come up with something to talk about. The tea very nearly scalded him as he took an overeager gulp, and he spluttered.

Hux handed him a plate with a biscuit. “I’m so sorry, please do take your time. There’s no rush.”

They eased back into conversation, Hux bringing him up to date on political issues and other problems that had been facing the city over his years incarcerated. Ren found himself sucked into the conversation, enjoying his time with the doctor far more than he ever had. The man behind the medical mask was fascinating, and quite frankly, brilliant. Hux seemed similarly entertained with him, although there were clear failings in his knowledge base, things he knew nothing about and hadn’t a hope of learning.

They finished tea and Hux sighed. “Well. To business, I suppose. What did you think of my proposal?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The proposal I left for you.” He pointed to the envelope Ren had placed on the table.

“I haven’t read it yet.” 

There was a silence that fell between them as Hux paused awkwardly. “Can you...read?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh, alright then.” He looked relieved. “If you’d take the opportunity to read that,” he waved to the envelope again, “it’s an offer to continue working with me. If you’re willing, of course. I know I was given access to you due to...questionable policies, but I was hoping you would be willing to continue. I’d say most of your care has been seen to, but I was hoping you would grant me permission to do continued studies on your recovery, to see how your conditions continue to improve or worsen.” Hux looked eager. “There is a stipend associated with the position. Not much, I’m afraid, but it would be approximately half of the split earnings from papers published detailing your recovery.”

Ren shifted uncomfortably, recalling the humiliation of being a specimen for the Scientific Society. “I don’t know that I’ll be staying in London.”

“Ah.” The doctor floundered for a moment. “No parole? Family elsewhere?”

“No sir. And none I care to make contact with.”

Hux looked at him strangely. “Where are you going, then?”

It took him the space of a moment to construct a feasible lie. “I’m not entirely sure, sir. Figured I’d make my way to Dundee, had a friend there that worked on building the _Discovery_. Hoped I could get a job in the shipyards.”

“Do you have money to get there?”

“I’ll figure it out.” 

“Ren, the last thing you need is to go back to prison for stealing something to eat,” the doctor shook his head. “Let’s see what I can do for you to help you travel when Anya returns. I’m sure she can put together a meal or two for you as well.”

They continued conversing until the doctor’s housekeeper returned from down the road with a nicer change of clothes bought secondhand off a neighbor, much more appropriate to Ren’s size. He went to change in the spare bedroom the maid pointed to and, once dressed, found himself feeling truly hopeful for the first time in years. 

The doctor nodded his approval. “I suppose this is goodbye then. I do have some things for you though, to see you off.” The maid handed him a bundle that smelled delicious, and the doctor handed him a small travelling pack he could carry on his shoulder. “There’s a blanket in there, and Anya’s packed you some food. And this,” the doctor handed him an envelope, “should be enough to see you to Dundee.”

“Sir, you didn’t have to do…”

Hux smiled and Ren found himself unexpectedly short of breath. “Ren, I’m a doctor. As much as the world might paint me as a madman for my skill with a bone saw, I do genuinely care for the wellbeing of my patients, particularly those that have been under my care for years. You’ve managed to stay alive this long, and I’d like it to stay that way.” 

Though Ren couldn’t identify what hit him as the doctor held out his hand, the handshake left him feeling unexpectedly vulnerable. His voice faltered. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And if you ever happen to be in town again, even if it’s only for a couple of days, come see me. I know we…met under unfortunate circumstances, but I would be honored to be allowed to check in on your progress.” He hesitated. “Perhaps if you do, we could sit down and have dinner, more as friends than as doctor and patient.”

“I appreciate the offer.” His mind was still caught on the feeling Hux’s hand in his. Those were the hands that had torn him from the jaws of death, cut him apart and sewn him back together, aided in healing a broken body. Ren had the disconcerting feeling the doctor was now trying to heal what he perceived to be a broken soul.

As Ren released his hand, the doctor glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got a patient due fairly soon, and I’m sure you want to get moving while you still have plenty of light. Do you need a ride to the train station?”

Ren declined further help and excused himself, making as gracious an exit as he could. The door closed behind him and Ren found himself on a cobbled street. He made it half a mile before the realization that he was well and truly free sank in.

As much as he wanted to bask in the taste of freedom, the smell of a bakery, the shouting of vendors in the markets, the feel of the cobbles under his boots, he determined he didn’t have time to waste. Though at the start of his journey he had nothing but food and a blanket in his pack, he picked up a number of things along the way: a length of rope from an unattended cart, an extra shirt hung overhead in a narrow alley he slunk through, a couple jute sacks from alongside a stall as the owner haggled with a middle-aged woman. Small things that might not be noticed and were near untraceable.

His pack was slung over his shoulder and part of the doctor’s money in his pocket when he made his way to the docks as evening fell, mentally running through a scheme he could distantly remember someone running in his childhood. He wandered into a pub, joining in a couple hands of Catch-the-Ten and winning enough for a drink and some on top of that before ducking out as the rest of the table thought he went up to the bar for a drink. 

It was simple enough to bounce from pub to pub and once it had grown late and the tables had grown raucous with drink, it grew even easier to play the fool. Anyone who didn’t buy the half-drunken fool act caught a sharp glare, and Ren’s intimidating size was often enough to shut them up and give him time to escape with his winnings. It wasn’t long before he’d doubled the doctor’s money, and was fairly certain he’d amassed enough to pay for a cheap room.

He headed toward the area of town he remembered being oft inhabited by dockworkers and other laborers, keeping an eye out for any notice of open rooms. When he turned the corner and nearly found himself hit in the face by a low-hanging chalked sign that said ‘Vacancies’, he felt a swelling of hope, as if luck was truly on his side for once.

Inside, the building had a central room similar to many boarding houses, with a large sturdy table and well-worn furniture clearly suited to working men. The woman who sat behind the table was broad and blonde, with freakishly piercing blue eyes that seemed to stare straight through him as he stood awkwardly in the doorway. She sat peeling potatoes, the knife flickering in the light as her hands moved even though she wasn’t watching what she did.

“You here about the room?” The question was in a thick Cockney accent.

“Yeah. What’s it running?”

She looked him up and down. “Cheap. Lots of stairs up there, you know? Want to take a look?”

“Please.”

“Oh good. You already got your manners.” She rose from the table and made a motion for him to follow her. They stepped into a dark stairwell, although his eyes adjusted quickly. He followed her, noting that his original assessment of her as simply ‘broad’ had been an understatement. She was broad and tall, taller even than him. She looked as though she could haul him up over her shoulder with ease, and her arms spoke of hard, heavy work.

“Rent’s cheap ‘cause the room’s not the best. One tenant per room, company permitted. I don’t judge what you do in here, it ain’t my place. Most of my tenants are working men but I’ve got some working girls too. I don’t do food included but I’ll put together a meal most evenings and you can buy in if you want. No cooking in the room, you’ll have to go out to get your meals. First week’s rent up front, and then every Friday on the mark. I don’t do late renters, you either pay or you’re out, and I’ve kicked out bigger men than you, don’t doubt that I will.” She said it all in one go, like she’d said it hundreds of times before. “What’s your name?”

“Ren.”

She wiped one potato-slimy hand on her apron and held out a wide palm to shake. “I’m Essie Phasma, but everyone around here calls me Miz Phasma and you will too if you don’t want trouble.”

“Ah. Is there a Mr. Phasma?”

She shot him a glare that could have killed a lesser man. “What do you think?”

“I…uh. I think I’d better mind my own business.”

“There you go. You’re getting the hang of things.” She wiped her hands on her apron again. “So, you want it or no?”

“I’ll take it,” he nodded. They negotiated rent, he forked over about half the cash he had, and the room was his for the week.

Once she’d left, he pulled off his boots and slumped onto the ragged mattress. The bed reeked of previous tenants, the plaster was crumbling, and a damp chill came down from the roof, but the room was his, and he’d even paid for it.

He fell asleep, dreaming of proper food and luxuries he couldn’t afford.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Montmorency AU, and the setup (here at the beginning, at least) is heavily inspired by Montmorency: Liar, Thief, Gentleman?, a YA book I loved years ago and only recently stumbled upon again. This AU itched at me to write it for weeks, so here we are.


End file.
